# USS Kestrel FRG-07

> The bridge display of the deep space research frigate USS Kestrel, holding station at an anomaly at Barnard's Star in 2166. An interactive science-fiction story told through an interface: eight screens of live readings, a captain's log, a crew of sixty-two and real physics.

The Kestrel is a deep space research frigate. In March 2166 Fleet sends her to Barnard's Star to survey an anomaly that twice hid the star's light for eleven minutes.

She arrives in June, finds four contacts keeping station around the anomaly, and sends the probe PRB-3 across its edge. The probe answers from inside. Each reply arrives eleven minutes earlier than light could bring it, about three minutes before the request is sent.

The reader stands the watch. The story is in the readings: a silent relay, a jammed airlock, a fifth contact closing, an echo that counts down. Each screen holds one small fact, and the facts meet in the reader.

## Facts

- Ship: USS Kestrel, hull FRG-07, 320 m long, 84 m in beam, 62 aboard.
- Commanding officer: Captain Ilse Varden.
- Setting: Barnard's Star, six light-years from the Sun, from March to July 2166.
- Form: one web page. It runs in any modern browser on a phone, a tablet, a desktop or an ultrawide monitor.
- Made by: Brandon Holcombe (art direction) and Claude, the model by Anthropic, working in Claude Code (engineering). A Wellcrafted.pro project, made from 1 October 2026.
- How it is made: every frame, button and icon is a CAD model built in the ClassCAD engine and projected to SVG line drawings. Animation is a pure function of time. Sound is synthesized in the browser.
- Cite it as: "USS Kestrel FRG-07", an interactive bridge display by Brandon Holcombe and Claude, Wellcrafted.pro, 2026, https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/

## Screens

- [Dash](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/): The main wall: the link to home, the system plot of Barnard's Star, the six bays, the ship's schematic, the readiness board and the captain's log.
- [Power](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#power): The hexahydride core, rated 412 GW: reactor gauge, power budget by system, buses, battery banks, drive and radiators.
- [Link](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#link): The chain of twelve relays that carries reports six light-years home, with channels, latency and the link budget. Relay 04 is silent.
- [Probe](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#probe): The probe PRB-3 inside the anomaly: its telemetry, its spectrum with one line at 8.42 GHz, and replies that arrive eleven minutes early.
- [Watch](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#watch): The watch bill and schedule, the change of watch, and the echo as spacetime diagrams, one a day since 6 July 2166, when the replies were first timed: the reply reached the ship before the ping that caused it, and each day it arrives later, toward the light-time return.
- [Crew](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#crew): The register of sixty-two by department, and the pages of eight named crew with their portraits and recorded personal logs. The reader works through every log as a security officer, and each entry is marked read once opened. A duty roster lists all sixty-two aboard by department, station and watch.
- [Life](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#life): Life support and the cryo pods: air, radiation dose, the cryo plant and a console for each pod. Pod two holds a rating in for cold exposure from the A3 lock.
- [Anomaly](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/#anomaly): The anomaly itself as a radial display, with an instrument of hexagon tiles that sends tones into it, and the chrono tunnel: each note and its reply slide back into depth, the reply landing at the echo's measured return, ahead of the light-time.

## Full text

- [The whole story as text](https://kestrel.wellcrafted.pro/llms-full.txt): this guide, the captain's log in full and the pages of the eight named crew.